Occasional comments about business and politics in Portland, Oregon, mixed in with stories from our city's colorful if not always compliant past.
"The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly." -- Touchstone

April 30, 2014

Sterling characters, in basketball and football

One of the distinctions between professional basketball and professional football is that if the owner of a basketball team, Donald Sterling, privately makes a racist remark about blacks to his girlfriend, the basketball commissioner fines him $2.5 million and boots him from the sport. If the owner of a football team, Daniel Snyder, publicly sells clothing emblazoned with his team's name (Redskins, a derogatory term for Native Americans), the football commissioner does nothing much, and in fact calls the Washington Redskins name a "unifying force that stands for strength, courage, pride, and respect." Whether Mr. Snyder and the football commissioner would take so cheerful a view of a team nickname that stood for the same qualities in their own ancestors is a question that so far they haven't answered in public.

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Sterling characters, in basketball and football

One of the distinctions between professional basketball and professional football is that if the owner of a basketball team, Donald Sterling, privately makes a racist remark about blacks to his girlfriend, the basketball commissioner fines him $2.5 million and boots him from the sport. If the owner of a football team, Daniel Snyder, publicly sells clothing emblazoned with his team's name (Redskins, a derogatory term for Native Americans), the football commissioner does nothing much, and in fact calls the Washington Redskins name a "unifying force that stands for strength, courage, pride, and respect." Whether Mr. Snyder and the football commissioner would take so cheerful a view of a team nickname that stood for the same qualities in their own ancestors is a question that so far they haven't answered in public.